ITHACA, N.Y. -- A new Cornell University study found that while hotel managers and staff provided extraordinary personal service during the massive blackout of August 2003, many properties experienced significant operating failures after the lights went out -- and are not well- prepared for a future blackout.

The study, by Robert Kwortnik, an assistant professor at Cornell's School of Hotel Administration, looked at 93 hotels, from economy to luxury properties, that lost power when the outage struck the northeastern United States and Canada last summer. The affected hotels were without electricity for 16 hours on average and for as long as two days in some instances. One-quarter of the hoteliers surveyed had standby power to operate wide sections of their hotels, but those auxiliary systems failed for some properties. In many hotels, backup power to critical emergency systems failed after several hours.

Kwortnik's report, which comes with recommendations that are endorsed by a top hotel operations executive for minimizing problems during future emergencies, is available at the Center for Hospitality Research Web site: http://www.chr.cornell.edu .

"The study showed that most hotels provided guests with extraordinary personal attention and assistance during this difficult time," Kwortnik said. "Nevertheless, the range of facilities and operational problems revealed by this study is unsettling and suggests that service quality and the guest experience were compromised at many hotels."

All hotels reported accommodating guests, whether they had reservations or were walk-ins. When rooms were full, some properties sheltered guests in public spaces. In addition, staff were inventive and hard-working in handling operational problems caused by the emergency.Many hotels lost their ability to cook. Some had gas-fired stoves but still could not prepare hot meals because they had no way to vent cooking exhaust. Most hotel staffs made do with cold food service, and some set up grills outside or even ordered in food.

In addition, manual operation was used for many functions, including check in and billing and escorting guests to their rooms by flashlight. In cases where water supplies failed, some staff members carried buckets of water to guest rooms for washing up and flushing toilets.

Hoteliers almost unanimously believed that they had met or exceeded guests' expectations by housing them and in some cases feeding them, just as if power were on. And in the wake of the blackout, many hotels said they would update their emergency plans and build an inventory of blackout items, such as flashlights and batteries. However, when those surveyed were asked what would be done differently in the future to prepare for emergencies, the most frequent response was "nothing."

"A number of hoteliers considered the blackout to be a one-time event, yet extended power outages due to weather and other factors are more common than people think," Kwortnik said. "Other hotel managers believed that they could not really plan for such a situation."

Kwortnik concludes that by not planning for the recurrence of such circumstances, hoteliers are placing their trust on what got them through the blackout last August -- their employees. Based on his study's findings, he highlights a wide variety of actions hotel managers can take today to safeguard the service delivery system and better prepare for emergency events in the future.

"This report should be required reading for hotel owners and managers," said Tom Riegelman, vice president of engineering at Hyatt Hotels Corp. "It's eye-opening just how unprepared some hoteliers were for dealing with the blackout but also how remarkably well others did in responding to the challenge. The recommendations that emerge from this study provide a roadmap for emergency planning that most any hotelier would be wise to consider."

The hotels examined in this study were drawn from the Smith Travel Research (STR) database. STR has a strategic alliance with the Center for Hospitality Research to develop a series of research studies that seek to answer some of the hotel industry's thorniest questions.

About the Center for Hospitality Research: A unit of the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, the Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) sponsors groundbreaking research designed to improve practices in the hospitality industry. Under the lead of CHR's 34 corporate supporters, experienced scholars work closely with business executives to discover new insights into strategic, managerial and operational issues.